Survive

This is stupid. It’s probably the worse idea I’ve ever had. I mean, who takes a three day trip to visit someone they have never met in their life because they promised their eighteen year old self something that so clearly seems like the worse idea since olives on pizza. It doesn’t matter that this has been on my list since I got the papers seven years ago. It can probably wait until next year. No, see, this is exactly the kind of thinking that made me put this off for so long. I think that’s the reason I made it a New Years resolution. Not that helped much. It only added to me spending four of the seven years trying to cross it of the list of all the stupid things I wanted to achieve in the new year. Solving world hunger would probably have been more achievable than this stunt I’m trying to pull right here.

“Are you okay?” I stare at the girl in front of me. Her pink hair, piercings and dark make-up making her look every bit like the teenager I wish I had the guts to be. Instead I had perfect hair and the only thing I ever got the permission to pierce was my ears. She looks bored though, like she doesn’t have time for my emotional turmoil in the middle of her busy shift that she wish she wasn’t here for right now. “Hey, are you going to buy that or not?” This question tells me she’s clearly annoyed with my standing here and looking every bit like the idiot I feel like.

“Yeah, sorry.” I place my things down on the counter and calculate if it’s going to be enough stuff to get me through this full day of driving. “Actually, could you hold on just a moment?” I don’t wait for her to answer as I make my way back into the four isles of the small store. I grab some more chips and water and for good measure I take two of the off brand CD’s on the small shelf by the deasil oil. When I’m finally ringed up the girl looks like she’s happy to see me off and the man who stood behind me makes a comment about how weird city people are. I wonder if it’s my clothing or the car that I drive that clued him in on the fact that I so clearly don’t belong in this backwards place they are so fond of calling home.

The music on the CD’s end up being crappy country songs that I somehow take a liking to after playing each CD twice. When I play one of them, I don’t know witch one, for the third time I can sing along to the chorus of all the songs and when they play for the fourth time I consider chucking them out of the window. Instead I turn the radio on and indulge in one of the many candy bars I bought from the girl with the pink hair. By the time the sun stats setting I know I’ve planned this whole thing very crappy, or maybe I should have just gotten up this morning when I was supposed to. I mean, who wants to spend more time inside a crappy motel than they need to? Me, of course, when I’m trying to avoid the worst mistake of my life.

It’s almost eight p.m. when I drive by a sign that says Welcome to Rosewood in big black letters. It’s not long before I’m driving down a road that looks like the start of every horror movie I’ve ever watched. I can’t fathom having been born in a place where the trees line the roads like they belong there when I’ve grown up in a city where the only trees you see is in a really nice suburb. When I finally enter the town I can breath easier when I don’t see trees as far as the eye can see. It actually doesn’t look like the wilderness and for that I’m happy. Somewhere in the five streets this place have I find a decent looking motel. As I park my car I contemplate if I should enter the place, mainly for the fact that I don’t see any other cars in the parking lot, or anyone on the street for that matter. Ten minutes of contemplating later I’m pushing the door open to be met by a surprisingly cozy looking front room. A bored looking man sitting behind the counter.

“Are you lost?” Is the first words out of his mouth and before I can say anything else, more spill out. “If you take the road you came on back and take the first right, you can get back to the city. It might take you some time but really after you leave here it isn’t my problem how you get there.” I look down at myself and conclude that I don’t look that much like a city girl. Well, I also don’t look like I’m someone who belongs in these parts of the world but then again, I wouldn’t know how that someone is supposed to look. If I didn’t find that pink haired girl in a small town I would have pegged her for a city girl who goes to dingy bars and maybe checks out a poetry reading once in a while because of some misplaced sense of obligation of fucking with people’s minds.

“I’m not lost. I’m just looking for a place to sleep. I have some business in town in the morning.” I don’t know why I tell him the last bit. Probably so he believes my story of not being lost but by the way be looks at me I can tell he’s not completely buying it. “Listen, I don’t really care what you think. Right now I would just like a room and a hot shower so I can question my sanity in peace.” I can tell this surprises him but he doesn’t question it any further as he quickly sets me up with a room and a warning of being quite because apparently there are people sleeping in some of these rooms. Either way it doesn’t matter much to me because soon after my shower, witch doesn’t get as hot as I would like it too, I fall asleep dreaming about all the ways things can go wrong tomorrow morning.

“Good morning, hon. What can I get you?” A woman not much older than I am asks as she comes to a stop in front of my booth. I stare at her neatly pinned up hair and clean uniform and wonder if she sees a lot of strangers around here.

“Can I ask you a question?” She frowns down at me but nods her head anyway. “Do you happen to know a Carol May Jones that may or may not live in this town?” I’m not sure if this town is really small enough for everyone to know everyone but considering I’ve only seen one other dining place while driving it just might be.

“Who’s asking?” By her tone I know I’ve asked the right person. I look around the quickly filling place, a little surprised that it manages to get this busy at ten a.m. in the morning. Aren’t people supposed to be at work around this time? I mean, I would be if I was back in the city right now.

“Well, it’s complicated you see and I would rather talk to her about this.” The neat woman still doesn’t seem convinced and I know she’s not going to give anything up unless I give her a more concrete answer. “Do you have time to talk?” I ask and she shakes her head.

“No, I have a job to do. So, if you don’t want anything else than to harass the people around here I suggest you leave.” She glares down at me before turning around but I grab her arm before she can get to far.

“She might be my mother. This Carol woman.” I say the words as soft as I can because I haven’t exactly said them aloud since I got the piece of paper on my eighteenth birthday. All I’ve really done is put it away and avoided thinking of it for as long as I possibly can. The neat haired woman stares at me for a while before she sighs and shakes her head.

“Wait here.” Is all she says before she’s slipping her arm from my weak grip and heading towards the counter. I watch as she whispers something to the man manning the cash register who looks up at me and then back at the woman. He says something to her and then she’s heading back in my direction. “Come on.” She doesn’t wait for me as she walks away once more and I’m forced to follow her. Although I can only hope she’s taking me to Carol I can’t really be sure of anything at the moment. I’m not even sure why I decided that this was the year I should finally cross this off my list of crazy idea’s I have. I mean, I have a mother, one who raised me even though I wasn’t really hers to begin with. Why I’m here looking for a woman who didn’t want me is something I’ve been trying to find an answer to for the last three days.

She leads me towards a door in the corner and then down a short hallway before showing me a small office and telling me to wait here. I sit down on one of the chairs facing the desk and keep myself busy by looking around the cramped space, even though there isn’t much to see in the first place. I wait a good few minutes before the door is opened once again and the man I saw at the cash register is making his way into the room and sitting behind the desk. He stares at me and the first thing I notice is that we have the same eye color. It’s something that many people share but the way his nose turns up slightly at the tip and his ears point at the top gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach.

“I didn’t think I would see you again.” The words leave his lips like we share a familiar space. Like I’m a lost friend he hasn’t seen a while and maybe thought something happened to me over the years.

“I’m looking for Carol May Jones. Do you know her?” This seems like a safe, yet loaded, question and I don’t really know if I’m going to like the answer to it. He nods his head, just kind of staring at me before shaking himself out of his self induced trance.

“She passed away a year ago. We didn’t think you would come here. I’ve just always figured they never told you about us.” He says all this like I’m supposed to know some kind of part to the story as to why I’m sitting here today.

“They gave me her name and the name of this town when I turned eighteen. That’s it.” Silence fall over us and he just sort of looks at me. Then he gets up and walks towards a filing cabinet in the corner of the room. It takes him a moment of fiddling before he pulls out a box and runs his fingers across it, like it’s some kind of treasure he doesn’t want to part with. When he’s back in his seat he places the box on the table and slides it towards me.

“She wanted to give you that herself. She just went before she had the chance to.” I stare at the box for a moment before I take if from the table and flip the lid on it. The first thing I take out is a picture of three people. A woman with dark curly hair, chocolate skin and a big white smile on her face, a man with blond hair, sun kissed skin and a boyish grin and a baby resting between them. I stare at the man, the same one sitting in front of me now, only years older and none of his boyish features in sight. The next thing is a folded piece of paper. It turns out to be a birth certificate with the name Maya Rose Jones printed in bold letters. The names Carol May Jones and Reed Jones are also on the paper but I choose to ignore that for now. The next thing is a thick envelope with the same name on the birth certificate written on it in neat handwriting. The last item in the box is a necklace, well half of one at least. The other half burns my skin under my shirt.

“How did she die?” I don’t recognize my voice in the small space we’re in and I don’t understand the heavy feeling on my chest but I try not to pay attention to that at the moment.

“Cancer. It runs in her family.” I nod, because suddenly it’s the answer to all the questions as to why I’m here. “Can I ask you a question?” He asks after a long silence of me just staring at the picture in my hands. I slowly look up into the orbs that mirror mine and nod my head. “Why did you come here now? After all these years?” I stare at the woman in the picture. The woman who’s DNA coded the very reason why I’m really sitting her today.

“I’m trying to complete all the New Years resolutions I haven’t gotten to over the years. Sort of like a New Years bucket list.” It’s so far from the truth, yet not a complete lie and it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. He doesn’t say anything after that and I don’t know if I should be grateful for that. “I think I should go.” With these words both of us get up from our chairs and leave the room. I have breakfast, lunch and dinner at the diner, spending my time looking out of the window and plucking up the courage to read the letter that has a name that’s as unfamiliar as the town I am in on it.

“It was nice meeting you.” I shake his hand and find myself wondering how it would have been if these were the hands that took care of me when I fell off my first bike. If they were the hands that cradled me when teaching me how to dance, the hands that punched the first boy who broke my heart. I wonder how it would have been if they were the hands that held me together when it felt like my whole world was falling apart. Then I stop wondering and remove my hand from his.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Is all I can manage before I’m walking out of the diner and getting into my car. I spend the night at the hotel and in the morning I fill up my car and my supply of junk food before I’m hitting the road again. The box, with the life I should have had, in the bottom of my suit case and my heart heavy as I see the sign Now Leaving Rosewood in bold black letters flash past me. I trace my way back to the city and when I see the girl with the pink hair again I decide that this small town is exactly where she belongs. Here where she can listen to bad country music and pretend she hates it and work at a store where she can judge a city girl like me who passes through and who she won’t remember a few weeks from now.

This is stupid. It’s probably the worse idea I’ve ever had. I mean, who decides to read a letter of their dead birth mother while sitting in a hospital room getting pumped full of chemicals to fight a sickness said dead mother also had? It probably doesn’t matter anyway. Solving world hunger would probably have been more achievable than this stunt I’m trying to pull right here. But then again, so is completing a New Years resolution bucket list. Last one on my list for this year?

Survive.